Putting the Time Turner into the Magic Dishwasher

[Judy]

First, according to my understanding, MAGIC DISHWASHER is the theory 
that Dumbledore wants many of the seemingly unfortunate events of the 
stories to occur, such as Voldemort using Harry's blood to regain a 
body, because it will eventually set up Voldemort for defeat, and 
that Dumbledore is in fact "pulling the strings" behind the scenes to 
cause these things to happen. 

I said:
"It seems to me that JKR subscribes to this theory of time-travel 
(that one can travel back into time, but the past can't be 
changed.)...So, once Dumbledore *knows* that the events of GoF have 
happened, he also knows that he can't change them."

And Sean wrote:
> The trouble is, you have no idea whether [Dumbledore] participated 
> in the events or not.

Oh, that's certainly true. For all we know, maybe Dumbledore did use  
a Time Turner to set up the events in the graveyard.  But you seemed 
to be saying more.  You seemed to be saying that if Dumbledore 
objected to Voldemort's return, he would have gone back in time and 
stopped it.  Therefore, since Dumbledore did not go back in time and 
alter the events in GoF, Dumbledore must have wanted them to happen 
(or at least acquiesced to them), which would be evidence for MAGIC 
DISHWASHER.  

I'm saying that, in the Potterverse, undoing what happened in the 
graveyard just isn't possible -- changing the past can't be done.  
So, the fact that Dumbledore didn't try to change the past doesn't 
tell us anything about the truth of MAGIC DISHWASHER, one way or the 
other.

Sean said that using the Time Turner in PoA required some knowledge 
of the future, which seems to have been supplied by Dumbledore:
>>>The PoA movie took that one step further by very
obviously showing DD knowingly participating in the events he knew H 
& H to be reshaping, suggesting he'd already worked out what would 
need to happen. Your mind sort of folds up and puts itself away at 
that point :)<<<

Yeah, the really confusing thing about this theory of time travel is 
that it seems to allow knowledge to be created from nothing. For 
example, our hypothetical time traveler, Tina, could learn about the 
cure for AIDS in school in 2025, then come back to 2005 and teach the 
cure to today's scientists, who would later teach it to Tina. So, 
where did the cure come from? 

But in PoA, Dumbledore doesn't really need to know what's going to 
happen in the future. He just needs to be very, very smart. In the 
movie, it shows him being very thoughtful (saying, "Hmmm...curious"" 
or something similar) when he finds that Buckbeak is gone.  When 
Harry and Hermione tell him that Sirius is innocent, he may have 
deduced that a Time Turner had been used to free Buckbeak -- then all 
he has to do is tell Hermione to use the Time Turner. 


Sean said:
> My only problem with that theory is that it makes Snape altogether 
> too wonderful.

I asked:
> > I'm curious -- why would your theory make Snape wonderful? 

And Sean said:
> MAGIC DISHWASHER is not my theory, it's Pippins :) 

Oh, OK, I misunderstood what you meant by "that theory."  I thought 
you meant the theory that Dumbledore was using a Time Turner, not 
MAGIC DISHWASHER in general. I have no real preference, one way or 
the other, about MAGIC DISHWASHER, although I understand why other 
people feel so strongly about it.  On the other hand, I *am* fond of 
the theory that Snape is wonderful.  :-) 

-- Judy